


Die With You

by unwhithered



Category: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Implied Character Death, No Major Character Death, Rex and Ahsoka are my BROTP, attempted suicide, every body lives, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-08
Updated: 2017-01-08
Packaged: 2018-09-15 21:09:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9257345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unwhithered/pseuds/unwhithered
Summary: Trapped behind enemy lines and gravely wounded, Ahsoka Tano and Captain Rex have little hope of surviving and making it back to their base. Rex is ready to die for his Jedi, but she refuses to go on without him.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by Something I Need by OneRepublic.

_If we only die once, I wanna die with you_

After two years of unceasing war the ever closer thud of cannon fire barely shakes Ahsoka. It’s the uneven, wet, rattling sound of Rex’s breath that sets her nerves on edge. She blocks both out as best she can and takes another limping, stumbling step, dragging Rex along with her even when his feet barely move. Thick clouds of dirt and powdered duracrete hang in the air, stinging her eyes and making it hard to breathe - harder, when paired with three barely stabilized broken ribs and half the weight of a fully grown man bearing down on her shoulders. She blocks that out too.

Rex trips as they round a corner, knees going out from under him, and takes Ahsoka to the ground with him in an uncontrolled fall. When she reaches for the Force to catch them it doesn’t answer. Instead her knees hit the ground hard, the impact vibrating through every strained muscle and broken bone in her body. Maybe if her montrals weren’t leaking blood from a deep wound, doubtless accompanied by a concussion, she wouldn’t have screamed. But they are, and she does. Her high pitched cry breaks the still air between distant explosions and echoes back from the empty, crumbling buildings. They are utterly alone in the wreckage of a city that once housed ten million, and no one is coming to their rescue this time.

A war plane buzzing low overhead jerks Ahsoka from her thoughts Force only knows how long later. The world is blurry at the edges and she can’t tell if it’s pulsing along with her heartbeat or the slowly approaching cannons. Shaking herself back to awareness, she tries to do the same to Rex. “C’mon, Rexter. Nap break is over.”

When he doesn’t respond she shakes him again, harder and harder until he groans and curls in on himself defensively. Fresh blood has soaked through the bandage covering half his chest and begun to drip down what remains of his armor, filling the air with the stench of death. “Up,” Ahsoka grits out, trying not to breathe through her nose. She slides an arm under his shoulders and lifts with all of her strength, having given up on trying to do it without hurting him hours ago. “Kriff, this is easier with the Force.”

That seems to catch his attention - just a flash of golden eyes looking over at her and a twitch of muscles, but she’ll take it. Once she gets Rex on his feet he takes some of his own weight, dragging himself slowly along as she sets off. One step after another. Or, more often than not, a step, stumble, curse, and repeat, until they have to pick their way carefully over rubble at the end of the street. As long as Ahsoka focuses on keeping Rex conscious and moving she doesn’t have to think about the little green hand sticking out of what must have once been a storefront, or the broken dolls littering this particular corner. There is nothing she can do for the dead. They were too late - her duty is to those still living, to the man at her side clinging to life by his fingernails and the ones waiting for them both on the other side of the enemy line.

They go on like that until the blue tinted sun sinks below the horizon, and yet Ahsoka feels like they’ve made no progress at all. Everything about the dusty, gray, half-demolished city feels the same - dead and empty. She could have retraced their exact route and recognized none of it. But thinking like that won’t help keep them alive.

“Try the comms again,” she instructs Rex as she lowers him carefully to sit in the shelter of two crumbling walls. She throws herself down more carelessly, groaning as her sore _everything_ protests, and begins shuffling through the pouch on her belt.

“They’re still dead,” Rex reports. Ahsoka’s head snaps up, her blue eyes going wide, as she replays the first words he’s said in...hours. Weak and shaky, yes, but _words_ , far more of a response than she expected to her aimlessly repetitive order. “Just like they were...whenever you asked me before. Kriff, I can’t remember when that was.”

Ahsoka hums in the back of her throat as she finds what she’s looking for. Two syringes from the trooper med kit that she started carrying a month or two into her apprenticeship to Anakin Skywalker. And, dammit, they’re her last two. She jams the stim into the side of her own neck, sending a pulse-pounding jolt of energy through her body almost instantly, and sticks Rex with the painkiller before he can protest that she needs it too. When he doesn’t bother, she knows it’s bad.

“Four or five hours, I think,” she finally answers. “Here.” She shoves a ration bar into his hand, forcing his fingers to close around it and noting the blue tint to his nail beds. That can’t be good. He’s lost more blood than she realized. “Eat, Rexter. We’ve gotta start moving again.”

“Shouldn’t waste this on me,” he replies, blinking down at the bar like he’s not sure what to do with it. Like he hasn’t been eating the things his whole short life. “I know we’re running out. Lost the packs at the...at the…” He shakes his head hard, reaching for words he can’t remember.

“There’ll be as many as we can eat waiting back at camp.” If there’s a camp to return to. The bombs haven’t stopped dropping since their strike force snuck past enemy lines three days ago and she can’t imagine there’s much left standing outside of the walled city.

“Let’s face it. I’m not getting back to camp, little’un.”

“Don’t start with that again,” Ahsoka snaps, harsher than she means to, but she’s sick to death of his self-sacrificing routine. It isn’t the first time in the past forty hours that Rex has told her to leave him behind.

“Ahsoka!” Rex dredges up enough energy to half turn toward her, his face pinched and pale, one hand pressing down on the blood soaked bandages covering half his chest. “You’re spitting up blood, you can barely walk straight. If you don’t leave me now you aren’t going to get out of this city alive either.”

She sets her jaw in that stubborn way she learned from her master, staring him down even though her eyes won’t quite focus. “I guess I’m not going to make it out alive, then. Because I’m _not_ leaving you behind.”

“Dini’la jetii,” Rex has to pause to cough, doubling over and wheezing until his lips and hands are covered in a fine spray of blood. “You left the rest of our squad behind. My life is not worth any more than theirs. _Yours is_.”

“No, it’s not! I hate myself for leaving them, Rex. They were my brothers, every one of them, and I’ll say their names every night during Remembrance for the rest of my life. But they’re dead, and we’re alive.” She snarls, covered in blood and filth and still every inch a huntress. Every inch his commander, the one he once doubted she could become. Throwing aside her own half eaten ration bar, she climbs to her feet, ignoring the way the world tips on its axis. “I _refuse_ to say your name, too, Captain. Get _up_.”  She jerks on his good arm, nearly falling over in her attempt to force him to stand. “Unless you want me to sit down and wait right here to die beside you. I’ll die with you before I mourn you.”

“Di’kutla girl. Go! Leave me here.” Struggling against her leaves him gasping for breath, sucking down ash filled air and breathing out sprays of blood. It’s a pointless fight. Even cut off from the Force by her concussion, she’s stronger than his weak and broken body. “I was made to die for my jetii, for you! I’m ready to die for you.”

“Well then you’d better be ready to die _with_ me.” Bracing her feet against cracked paving stones, Ahsoka pulls - pulls until her bloody fingers can’t hold on anymore, slipping off of Rex’s wrist and sending her crashing back down on her ass. She sobs and kicks futilely at the broken duracrete around her, tears making mud out of the filth on her face rather than washing it clean. “Get up, Rex. Get up. You have to get up.”

“No, little’un. No I don’t.”

Ahsoka sees the blaster in his hand at the last second, the world slowing down as she watches him raise it, press it under his chin even though he’s shaking so hard he can barely keep it there. “ _No_!” Concussion or not, panic lets her grip the Force for the first time in something like forty hours, sending an uncontrolled shockwave through the air between them and knocking the blaster out of his hand the moment before it discharges. A section of wall to Rex’s left crumbles and the blaster flies out of reach, out of sight, leaving Rex empty handed and cursing until he runs out of breath.

“You - you coward, you hut’uunla traitor.” Ahsoka climbs to her feet once more and clutches her tenuous hold on the Force, channeling it into yanking Rex off the ground and up, up, over her shoulder as if he isn’t twice her size, screaming when her ribs grind against each other. She’s never going to make it, she knows. Their camp is at least three miles away, on the other side of the wall still guarded by battle droids, with bombs and traps and enemy patrols between her and any friendly faces. But at least she’ll go to the Force with no regrets. “If you try to die without me I’ll kill you again in the afterlife.”

Sixteen and martyred - not exactly what she pictured as the end to her apprenticeship, but better than a life haunted by the ghost of her brother and best friend. _I’m sorry, Master_ , she thinks. Then she puts one foot in front of the other, and she goes on until she can’t anymore.

\------

The afterlife smells like bacta. His General is going to hate that. The thought startles a laugh from Rex, and kriff, is the afterlife supposed to hurt? He must say that out loud, because a familiar voice answers him moments later.

“I don’t know, buddy. Guess we’ll find out when we get there. Hopefully not anytime soon.” Anakin is a blur of color above him when Rex tries to open his eyes, and that - that isn’t right. Nothing about this is right. He tries to say as much but can’t get the words past his dry, cracked lips. “Don’t try to talk. Or move. Or do anything, actually, Kix was pretty clear about that. It’s a miracle you’re alive.”

“Alive?” Rex mouths. His mind feels slow as sludge, trying to fit together the puzzle pieces of passing out, slung over Ahsoka’s thin shoulders and sure he was going to die, and waking up with his General standing guard over him. Kriff it all. Only one thing really matters anyway. “‘Soka?”

“In the bed right next to you, Captain. Don’t try to loo--”

Rex’s entire body screams at him as he turns his head, looking past Anakin to the biobed next to him. She’s more bandages than skin, bruises covering every bit of it that’s visible, but - Force bless it, her chest is rising and falling in an even rhythm.

“Dinii jetii. Can’t believe she did it,” he breathes out, darkness dragging him under again.

 

_If we only live once, I wanna live with you._

**Author's Note:**

> Mandoa:
> 
> Dini'la = insane
> 
> Dinii = lunatic
> 
> Di'kutla = stupid
> 
> Hut'uunla = cowardly


End file.
